THE CROP IS HIGH AGAIN THIS YEAR

Mounties Make Marijuana Hauls

RICH BLACK earth laced with white fertilizer pellets explodes into
the air as RCMP officers beat bushy green marijuana plants against
trees to loosen the soil from the roots. Some whoop in delight,
confident that they have found several dozen marijuana plants
belonging to a grower who has been a thorn in their side for years.

It's near the end of the first day of the annual fall marijuana
harvest in Kings County, when police go out in search of the
marijuana plants that are the hidden cash crop in the
agriculture-rich Annapolis Valley.

Police use a combination of intelligence gathered on the streets,
tips from the public and good luck.

The harvest, which lasts for about two months in the fall, is meant
to get the mature plants before they can be harvested, dried and on
the streets in the hands of dealers. Police also say that can help
reduce the number of break and enters, because if the supply drops,
users in the local area won't be stealing as much to feed their habit.

"There's a definite connection," Const. Craig Foley says.

He's been on several of these harvests and says growers will go to
extraordinary lengths to try to hide their plants. They might be
behind piles of car parts or deep in thick brush. But those measures
won't do much good on this day, because along with the seven members
on the ground, there will be two in a different location --
overhead in an RCMP helicopter.

Pilot Cpl. Tom Reid has made the short trip over to Kings County
Municipal Airport from his base in Moncton and is waiting for Const.
Al Philpott to arrive. They have time for a short chat before taking
to the air, as the chopper can make the run to the first search site
on the South Mountain in less than 10 minutes, while the crew on the
ground needs about a half-hour to get there.

There are several sites the team is targeting on this day. Members
have been out earlier setting co-ordinates for their GPS systems
based on tips or gathered information. The chopper then uses them to
fly to the right area and begin looking for plants from overhead.

The first site is supposed to have several plants scattered across a
large property, but the only ones found are in thick brush and trees
between Highway 12 and the front yard. They're well-hidden, but
after a couple of passes with the chopper, Cpl. Reid has picked the
plants out from the surrounding darker green foliage. It's not easy
to do for a beginner, but after nine years of piloting with the
force, he's quick to spot the bushy plants.

While the ground team members load the seized plants into their
trucks and their ATVs back onto the trailers once they've determined
there are no more to be found, the chopper starts heading for the
next site on the list. But with time to kill, Cpl. Reid flies over a
few backyards and heavily wooded areas. Just because there are no
tips on other nearby areas doesn't mean there aren't any plants.

Sure enough, just two kilometres down the road, he sees nine plants
scattered in a backyard in large plant pots. These ones stick out
like sore thumbs against the lawn, and the team pulls them out,
shakes the soil loose quickly and fires them into the back of the truck.

Meanwhile, the chopper heads across the street, and Cpl. Reid finds
another plant or two growing behind a shed in a cluster of bushes.
He directs a couple of members of the team there.

"We'll have to stop looking or we'll never get to site No. 2," he
says.He starts toward that site, the home of another known grower
with a heavily wooded property along a lake. He's several minutes
ahead of the ground team but wants to scout out the property and see
what he can find. As he swoops overhead, a man comes running from
the woods behind the house.

"He must be in a hurry, he ran right through the screen door without
opening it," Cpl. Reid says. The man then bolts out the front door
and into a white pickup truck with another person and they take off
down the highway heading toward Kentville. It's a lucky break for
the driver, as the ground team is coming from the other direction.

The chopper follows for about four minutes, but with fuel running
low, the aerial pursuit is abandoned and it's left to any other RCMP
cars in the vicinity to look for the vehicle.

The truck has turned off somewhere, though, and the driver avoids
identification. But arrests aren't the aim of the harvest, just the
removal of the drugs before they hit the street.

To do otherwise would take too much in the way of resources for
surveillance to determine who is visiting a site, as it could be
days before someone shows up. Their location is not always a clue,
as many people plant their marijuana on Crown land or private
property where there isn't a lot of foot traffic. If the
grow operation involves a large number of plants, however, a full
investigation would be underway and arrests made.

The last stop of the day, where the plants seem to be those of the
grower they have long been after, is a prime example. The chopper
has spotted them easily, but the route to them involves driving
through thatches of trees where the ATV path seems to end. Tree
branches whip the faces of members on the vehicles before they get
off and fan out through woods in search of the scattered plants.

The seized plants fill the front cargo racks of the four ATVs,
including one plant full of buds that Const. Foley calls "the
best-looking plant I've ever seen."

In all that day, Kings RCMP seized 310 plants, and had a few
thousand for the fall. That doesn't include the 550 pounds of dried
marijuana taken in a couple of seizures.

An estimated 6,000 plants were pulled out of the ground across the
province this fall. With the plants potentially worth up to $2,000
at maturity, that takes about $12 million in marijuana off the
streets, police say.